May 2, 2016 AT 3:15 pm

NEW TUTORIAL: 7 Segment Display Internet Clock

When I saw these 7 segment displays with FeatherWing backpacks on Ask an Engineer, I got really excited. I love clocks! I have the original Ice Tube clock from Adafruit, plus the PiGlow daughter card binary clock, plus my collection of watches (including a programmable TI digital watch that I’ve re-programmed to display Martian Standard Time and the current Sol). So the thought of having a mobile clock with a colored display made me immediately run to the shop and buy three colors (and a Circuit Playground, but that’s for another tutorial).

This clock design uses NTP (Network Time Protocol) to always display the accurate time, synchronized to the same clocks that run the Internet!

Follow along to build your own ultra-precision clock that always has the exact right time, synced to Internet atomic-accuracy clocks!

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.